Young children and the ability to ‘self-regulate’
Are your children aware of their feelings, needs, and impulses? Can they calm themselves, control their behaviour, and focus on tasks?
Preschoolers and Kindergarteners who have these skills find it easier to take turns, make friends, and adapt to school routines. This emotional/social ability is called “selfregulation.”
Self-regulation is a deep, internal mechanism that enables children as well as adults to engage in mindful, intentional, and thoughtful behaviours.
It has two sides: firstly, it involves the ability to control one’s impulses and to stop doing something, such as pushing a friend out of a line up to wash hands for snack time.
Secondly, self-regulation involves the capacity to do something (even if one doesn’t want to do it) because it is needed, such as waiting one’s turn. Self-regulated children can delay gratification and suppress their immediate impulses enough to think ahead to the possible consequences of their actions or to consider alternative actions that would be more appropriate.
While most children know that they are supposed to “use their words” instead of hitting, only children who have acquired a level of self-regulation are actually able to use them.
Teaching young children selfregulation first requires strong parent and caregiver self-regulation. Children learn to regulate thoughts, feelings, behaviour, and emotion by watching and responding to adults’ selfregulation.
Ellen Galinsky is president and co-founder of the Families and Work Institute, and author of the best-selling Mind in the Making: The Seven Essential Life Skills Every Child Needs and The Six Stages of Parenthood. These are two of my favourite books for parents and educators. Referring to motivational, self-regulation, Galinsky notes, “Adults foster children’s motivation by being motivated themselves”.
Parents and caregivers of young children play a vital role in helping children develop foundational self-regulation skills through modeling and practice. Fortunately, young children’s everyday experiences offer abundant opportunities for developing self-regulation.
Parents and educators can take advantage of these opportunities by identifying each child’s developmental stage and planning the type of modeling, hints, and cues the child needs to continue his or her development; withdrawing direct support as children begin to demonstrate new skills; and monitoring children’s activities to ensure they are successful.
When parents and caregivers deliberately teach selfregulation as part of everyday experiences, they help children become actively engaged learners, laying the foundation for years of future success in school and life.
I have found through practical experience with children under five years of age, that selfregulation is the foundation of early learning, social competence, emotional maturity, physical skills and well-being.
By the time children are fourand five-yearolds, basic voluntary regulatory systems are established. Children now can intentionally attend and adapt to situations. I have observed that selfregulation supports children’s growing abilities to think about their feelings and to represent these feelings, intentions and actions in their words, play, drawings and block constructions.
Children need opportunities to practice the tools of self-regulation in everyday situations and learn strategies from first-hand actions with objects in their world, and from exchanging points of view with peers and adults.
Here are a few resources, websites and children’s books that offer more tips and tools for all involved in the growth and development of early learners and to provide a few more strategies and ideas for nurturing self-regulation and other skills for young children.
Read “The way I feel”, by Janan Cain, “How to be a Superhero called Self Control”, by Lauren Brukner, “Celia the Great”, by Abby Jacobs. Visit www2.gov.bc.ca and www.naeyc.org as well as www.bccf.ca
Good luck on your journey through parenthood and childhood and remember that you are not alone. You can’t control how some people will treat you or what they’ll say about you. But you can control how you react to it.